“Spectator” of Shadows: The Human Being in Jonathan Edwards’s “Images of Divine Things”

Authors

  • Griffin Black

Keywords:

American Religious History

Abstract

Jonathan Edwards’s world was a divine composition. Walking through grass, riding on horseback, looking at faces in the pews: he marveled at God’s authorship. “I believe that the whole universe, heaven and earth, air and seas, and the divine constitution and history of the holy Scriptures, be full of images of divine things, as full as a language is of words … that there is room for persons to be learning more and more of this language.”[1] Edwards cataloged the language of God throughout his life. “Images of Divine Things” is composed of two-hundred-and-twelve notes, Edwards’s observations of God’s communication through creation. He believed God’s choice mode of speaking via nature was typology. Traditionally, “types” were defined as figures, events, and symbols in the Old Testament that foreshadowed future fulfillment in the New Testament. For Edwards, typology became something different, something more living and present. To him, “types” were also earthly “shadows” or “images” of higher, divine realities. One could learn truths about Christ by observing the sun, a tree, or even a silkworm, each of these lowly images revealing glimpses of the divine. If one hopes to learn about this proposed language of God, the place to start is learning the typological language of Jonathan Edwards.


[1] Jonathan Edwards, "Types" in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 11, Typological Writings, ed. Wallace E. Anderson, Mason I. Lowance Jr., with David H. Watters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 152 (hereafter, WJE).

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Published

2018-11-23

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Articles